


Over and Over

by graves_expectations



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Letters, M/M, Pining, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 12:22:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11013345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graves_expectations/pseuds/graves_expectations
Summary: When Newt comes to find him that evening, he has to wade through all the crumpled up bits of paper that litter the carpet of his guest room. Credence turns in his chair at Newt’s entry, shamefaced. He’s aware that he must make a rather pitiful picture—sat at the desk with his head in his ink-stained hands, surrounded by all the evidence of his futile attempts to draft one simple letter.





	Over and Over

**Author's Note:**

> Most of my posted fics are all quite disparate and don't follow on from each other or fit together in any way, but I feel like this one could easily come before [Definitely Once](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10711623) where I referenced something like this.

_‘Dear Percival,’_ Credence writes.

His hand and the pen held in it hover over the paper, indecisive. He’s close to throwing this version away already and he’s hardly _started_. What is the matter with him?

He forges on: _‘I’m coming home to New York soon. I wanted to tell you before I do that I—’_

Credence crosses out that last sentence. Where was he even going with that?

_‘I hope you are well—’_

_Trite_ , he mentally berates himself, gritting his teeth. _Stupid_. Credence looks at the words on the page with dismay. He can’t cross out any more, that will just look ridiculous.

It’s no good. With a growl of frustration, he screws up the letter and tosses it onto the floor to join all the others. He puts the heels of his hands up to his eyes and kneads roughly, knowing he’s being absurd. He’s writing less and less each time before he just can’t seem to get any further, his opening sentences getting progressively weaker.

When Newt comes to find him that evening, he has to wade through all the crumpled up bits of paper that litter the carpet of his guest room. Credence turns in his chair at Newt’s entry, shamefaced. He’s aware that he must make a rather pitiful picture—sat at the desk with his head in his ink-stained hands, surrounded by all the evidence of his futile attempts to draft one simple letter.

“You know,” Newt says mildly, stooping to pick up the fountain pen that Credence had flung across the room in a fit of pique. “Someone very wise once told me that people are easiest to read when they're hurting.”

Newt comes closer and hands him the pen. His smile is gentle and there’s no judgement in his eyes where they’re trained just slightly off to one side. Credence still grimaces as he accepts the pen with a mumble of thanks, cheeks burning.

“She was quite right,” Newt continues. “But this—” here he indicates one of Credence’s discarded paper balls by looking down and nudging it with his foot—“is a time when barely any reading is required at all.”

Credence _knows_ that and he hates to be so obvious. He’d hoped to have all his mess tidied away before Newt got back, but he’d completely lost track of time as every disheartening failure mounted up. He never meant for Newt to witness the aftermath of hours spent trying to decide how best to let Percival Graves know he was coming back to New York.

He just wasn’t sure how much he should say, how much he should leave _unsaid_ before he had to see the man in the flesh again.

With a heavy sigh, Newt sits himself down on the edge of Credence’s bed. A single flick of his wand has the wadded up letters all clumping together in midair before they fly into the bin beside the desk. He frowns when it overflows and one ball spills over the edge onto the floor again, but he makes no move to correct it.

“You should have seen how long it took for me to write a halfway sensible letter to Tina last night,” Newt says when Credence fails to contribute anything to the conversation himself. “My room was in a not dissimilar state by the time I’d written something I could even consider sending.”

Credence can imagine. He pictures Newt—forehead creased and hand cramping like his had been earlier on—trying to craft a message that would say what was on his mind and in his heart. It would have been fraught for Newt, someone not given over to frequent displays of sentiment, never one for speaking when he didn’t have something to say (unless it’s about his creatures, and then he’s positively _verbose_ ). He’s a bit like Percival in that regard—they’re men of few words, but Credence knows from experience that both of them have an endless capacity for compassion.

That’s what makes him sure that whatever Newt’s letter contains, however inadequate Newt might have thought it, the words will still be exactly what Tina would want to hear. All the time he’s spent with Newt in the last year has been enough to make him certain that Newt’s brand of quiet kindness matches hers perfectly.

He can’t wait to see Tina when they get back, can still call her warm smile to his mind effortlessly.

“What did you say, in the end?” Credence asks, curiosity and hope for inspiration overcoming his self-consciousness. He remembers his manners at the last second, adding, “If it’s not an imposition to ask. It is, isn’t it? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry, I just—”

Newt’s soft laugh cuts him off and Credence flushes. “It’s fine, Credence. And I kept it simple. I told her that her correspondence these past few months has meant a great deal to me and that you and I are boarding a ship for New York next week so that I can finally give her that copy of my book that I promised her.”

“That’s it?” Credence asks. One of his earlier drafts to Percival had been just as succinct and he’d torn it up for being too superficial.

Newt shrugs, a quick rise and fall of his shoulders. “That’s it. We’ve said all that we needed to say in our previous letters up to this point, I think. Anything that remains is best said in person, however… difficult that may be. I know you’ve written to Percival as much as I have to Tina. Doesn’t the same apply?”

Credence thinks back to the letters he’d sent, how long his hands and heart would tremble after each one was _gone_ and he couldn’t take his words back. He recalls every detail in every letter received, the giddy swoop of joy in his stomach that he began to feel whenever Percival’s owl arrived with another.

He knows Percival’s handwriting as well as his own now. Knows the slant he gives his t’s and the curling tails of his y’s intimately. He’s traced indentations from the nib of a pen with his fingertips until he could almost read the words with his eyes closed.

After Credence set foot in England, Percival started by sending him apologies, things like:

_‘I should have been able to stop him before he ever laid a finger upon you.’_

_‘I know I hurt you when I wouldn’t let you visit me in the hospital. I hope you can forgive me. I just didn’t think it would be good for you, seeing my face after what had just happened, no matter the ruined state it was in.’_

Then, when he was satisfied with Credence’s response that many of the things he cited required no forgiveness at all and any that did were in the past now, he began to send assurances:

_‘Before everything that happened, I meant it when I said I would get you away from her, Credence. I would have done it if he hadn’t taken my chance away, I swear to you.’_

_‘I understand if you hate me now, but please know that my feelings towards you have not changed. I will always be your friend and if you ever need help, I will move mountains to give it.’_

Finally—after Credence gave his own assurances that he understood the differences between Percival and his impersonator, that he didn't hate him (far from it), and that he believed everything Percival was telling him—Percival started to send confessions:

_‘I have to admit: I only pretended not to understand No-Maj currency. I just wanted to you to accept what I was giving you and I thought that might make it easier.’_

_‘I still have nightmares. Do you? I charmed the ceiling of my bedroom to look like the night sky so I never wake up panicking that I’m in that hole again. I’m sure Newt could do something similar if you think you might find any comfort in it.’_

Newt could indeed do something similar, when Credence had shyly asked him to. Every night since, Credence had looked up at the stars while he laid in bed and waited for sleep to find him as he picked out constellations and wondered if his stars and Percival’s were arranged the same way.

Yes, Credence thinks, he and Percival probably _have_ said all they need to say before now.

In New York, Credence had barely known the man. Mr Graves—as he was then—was just Credence’s mysterious benefactor, a man with good looks and a good heart. _Percival_ is the sum of every part he’s given over to Credence in his letters, his hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares.

He didn’t love Percival when they spoke face to face. There was no time for that before Grindelwald struck, and Credence wasn’t in a position to feel such things back then anyway.

But now… now, Credence has gone and fallen in love with Percival from across the Atlantic, in the drag of pen over paper, the noise of envelopes being eagerly torn open, in the fond nip of his owl’s beak against his fingers.

He smiles at Newt in answer to his earlier question, and Newt returns it, obviously recognising that something has just clicked into place for Credence.

“Have you told him how you feel?” Newt asks.

Credence looks at the waste paper bin. “Over and over,” he says, with a soft, self-deprecating laugh. “And never. Not once.”

“Maybe now is the time then.” Newt’s hand comes down on his shoulder. Friendly. Fatherly, almost, which is a strange thought to cross Credence’s mind, but there it is. Newt is a mass of contradictions, as ever. “Write your letter.”

He leaves Credence to it.

Credence sucks in a steadying breath, takes up his pen, and brings a fresh sheet of paper into the centre of the desk.

 _‘Dear Percival,’_ he writes.

His hand hovers again. Words of love and longing flit through his consciousness and his heart presses against his rib cage, anxious to be let out.

In the end, his courage fails him.

_'I’m writing with the news that I’m coming home to New York. Newt and I will board a ship next week bound for America._

_I look forward to seeing you again soon and getting to talk with you in person once more._

_Yours truly,_

_Credence'_


End file.
